Serious. Anyone? What is this movie about?
A Mad Scientist does not have the ability to dream, which makes him prematurely old. He kidnaps children to steal their dreams, but they only have nightmares as a result of being kidnapped. A child whom One (Ron Pearlman calls ‘Little Brother’) is kidnapped, and the Mad Scientist discovers that the kid doesn’t fear; so he can steal his dreams. One and a little girl are on a quest to save Little Brother.
There’s something about fleas that inject a poison that turns people into homicidal maniacs, and something about clones; but it’s been too long since I’ve seen it to remember all of the details.
Weren’t the clones (all of them Dominique Pinon from Alien Resurrection and Amelie, if I remember) the mad scientist’s henchmen/assistants?
(It’s been a long time since I saw the film too.)
I don’t remember. Didn’t they have different personalities?
I think I may watch the film now. It’s either that, or do housework.
I think the correct answer is “freaky weird-ass French movie”. I will admit I’ve never watched it through from start to finish, but I’ve been in the vicinity a number of times when friends were watching it on TV. Super, super, weird.
It’s one of my all-time favorite movies.
A mad scientist created several humans, but they were all flawed: the septuplets were idiots, the woman was a midget. The worst, Krank, was brilliant, but he could not dream, and this tormented him, drove him evilly insane. He destroyed the scientist and took over his laboratory.
Somehow he decided that the dreams of children could cure his condition, and he began kidnapping children and hooking them into a machine that could capture their dreams, so he could dream them. However, the experience of being in the control of such a monster meant that all their dreams were nightmares, and experiencing these nightmares drove him even crazier.
A little boy from a carnival was kidnapped by Krank’s minions. His protector/father figure, One, went on a mission to save the little boy. Along the way, he encountered Miette, a hard-bitten orphan girl who ended up helping him rescue the little boy. She was a member of a Faginesque gang of child pickpockets, and the pickpockets don’t take kindly to her abandoning them. They eventually combine forces with the mad scientist (who turned out to have survived his destruction by Krank), and everyone goes to Krank’s tower to fight him and rescue the stolen children.
It’s absolutely beautiful (see it on a big screen if you can), very weird, very convoluted, and very funny in a freaky way. Great stuff!
Daniel
OK, I’m watching it now.
A scientist created the Mad Scientist, named Krank, a wife, who, through an error, is only ‘knee-high to a grasshopper’. He also created six clones of himself who suffer from narcolepsy, and a brain named Irvin that lives in a tank.
On Irvin’s birthday, Irvin suggests that if the children he’s kidnapping have only nightmares, then the evil must be in Krank. He suggests that Krank seek the answer by studying the molecular structure of his own tears. Krank asks who can make him cry, and Irvin explains the origin of the laboratory’s characters:
In an orphanage we see a Dickensian scene of orphan children turning over their ill-gotten booty to conjoined sisters called ‘The Octopus’. One, searching for Little Brother, happens upon the ‘orphanage’ or ‘thieve’s guild’ just as The Octopus is instructing the children on how to rob a safe. The children fear they’ll be caught, as it will take two hours to crack the safe – unless they can find someone strong enough to carry it. One, the carnival Strong Man, knocks over some bottles and alerts a guard dog. As he tries to escape he pops up through a trap door in the ‘classroom’. He closes the trap door and then picks up the heavy safe (a duplicate of the target one) and puts it on top.
At this point it’s not really clear how they convince him to take the safe, but he does. It is after the robbery that he befriends the orphan girl Miette. One tells Miette how he found Little Brother in a trash can. Miette gives One the mechanical eye of a Cyclops (a band of Krank’s blind henchmen, who can see with the aid of the mechanical eye each has been provided).
When it was playing in theaters, a friend got me to go see it by saying, “It’s exactly a cross between La Strada and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”
That’s awesome! 
And so is this movie.
It’s the best Terry Gilliam movie he didn’t make.
I love it!
Given that one of my other all-time favorites is Brazil, I suppose there’s a pattern.
Thanks for the more in-depth recap, Johnny!
Daniel
I actually played the video game, it was a really brilliant and beautiful, even pioneering game graphically at the time (original playstation). Pretty damn freaky, and I had never seen the movie (still haven’t) so it was all a bit incoherent without the movie to reference. Very dark game, peculiar and depressing ennui that game’s feel. In some ways even scarier than Resident Evil which was the best playstation game at that point.